John Lutz - Ride the lightning

As he walked back to his car he saw that the blond stewardess had refastened her bikini strap and rolled onto her back. She was wearing oversized dark sunglasses and a bored expression. Nudger doubted she'd ever been inside Gantner's apartment. Nudger drove to his office, thinking that Candy Ann was right about how the nearer the execution date loomed, the harder the witnesses would cling to their stories. They needed to be right about what they'd seen, or they themselves would be guilty of taking the life of an innocent man. Even in the face of the compelling new evidence Nudger hoped for, it might be impossible to get the witnesses to change their stories, to admit that they might have been mistaken as they mimicked their god and dictated premature death.

Not only was Gantner not going to reconsider what he'd seen the night of the murder, he was unmistakably enjoying Curtis Colt's predicament. There were undertones to Gant- ner's enjoyment that bothered Nudger; the expression on the construction worker's face when he talked about Colt's execution was reminiscent of the faces of children from Nudger's past as they bent studiously to watch a colony of ants slowly devour a writhing caterpillar. What they seemed to enjoy most about the caterpillar's struggle was that there was no doubt about the outcome, probably not even in the caterpillar.

Maybe that was something Colt understood. Though he'd been on the other side of the city from the holdup and murder, that didn't seem to make much difference to him. He had no doubt of the outcome of his life. Like most career criminals, Colt had a soured and cynical view of society. That he hadn't committed this particular crime wouldn't seem to make much difference, not if the cards were marked against him from the day he was born. Sooner or later he had to play a hand and lose everything. The game, his life, was fixed. He was sitting in his cell, certain now, as he had been from the beginning, that he was doomed to be society's victim. Now he was stubbornly refusing to plead, to beg. He wanted to withhold from his antagonists the one thing they were never able to take from him: his dignity.

Nudger called Iris Langeneckert and she refused to talk with him again. She said she had nothing to add, and that she was still certain of her story. Then she told Nudger she would pray for Curtis Colt's soul. Nudger believed her; she was one witness who wasn't taking the consequences of her testimony lightly.

Edna Fine agreed to see Nudger. He drove to her apartment building and parked across the street on Gravois, just down the block from the liquor store that had been the scene of the murder.

It was early evening now and had cooled down to the low eighties. In the west Nudger could see bursts of illumination flashing along the horizon. Chain lightning, it was called, an electrical disturbance that had nothing to do with rain and wasn't accompanied by thunder. It was often visible in the dry, warm evenings of long midwestern heat waves.

Nudger was crossing the street toward Edna Fine's apartment when he saw the blue Toyota pickup. It pulled away from the curb down the block, heading toward him.

Then it braked, made a slow U-turn, and drove away in the opposite direction, west toward the lightning. It hadn't gotten near enough for Nudger to get a clear view of the driver.

When Edna Fine answered his knock she was wearing a dark bathrobe that seemed oddly judicial. Or maybe that was just Nudger's warped perspective. Her hair was mussed and she was holding a long tortoiseshell comb. There were several strands of hair caught in the comb.

"I'm getting dressed to go out," she explained. "An appointment I forgot about. I'm rather in a hurry, Mr. Nudger."

"I won't keep you," Nudger said. "Did Randy Gantner just leave here?"

"Who?" She puckered her old-maid lips in puzzlement.

"Gantner. He's another of the witnesses in the Curtis Colt trial."

She nodded sternly. "Yes, now I remember the name. No, he hasn't been here. Not ever."

"All right," Nudger said, flashing the old sweet smile. "Can I have five minutes of your time?"

"Of course. Five minutes. I can give you that. But I must warn you, Mr. Nudger, I haven't thought of anything new, and I really can't change my story about the night of the murder. Not in good conscience."

And she didn't change her story. Even Edna Fine seemed to be clinging to her version of the facts for comfort as Saturday drew nearer.

Nudger left her with her cats in her lilac-scented apartment and sat for a while across the street in the parked Volkswagen. He was reasonably sure it was Gantner's truck that he'd seen make the U-turn and drive away. But what was Gantner doing here? He had no reason to watch Edna Fine's apartment. And he hadn't gone inside. Or had he? Maybe for some reason Edna Fine was lying about not seeing Gantner. Or maybe Gantner had come to talk with her and hadn't had a chance before Nudger drove up and parked across the street from her apartment.

Another possibility gnawed. The prospect of some sort of collusion among the witnesses. Another development, however vague, that pointed to Colt's innocence.

Nudger clenched his fists in frustration. His stomach rumbled. Sometimes it seemed that he was the only one in his world who didn't realize what was going on. No one would tell him because they had other interests, other directions. He was the only one swimming against the current, stroking desperately to reach a destination nobody else cared about. Sometimes, most of the time, his life was lonely.

He started the car. Then he swallowed his frustration and not a little bit of pride and drove toward Claudia's. Some things he had to share, or they might eventually destroy him. He could share them with Claudia.

Their relationship might be frayed right now, but it would hold. She'd understand. When Nudger needed to talk, she always listened. Always.

He geared down the Volkswagen to take a sweeping curve in the road, then picked up speed, heading east. Behind him the mocking lightning danced wildly in the vast darkening sky.

Claudia was home. Nudger saw a light in her front windows as he parked across the street from her apartment on Wilmington.

Though dusk had crept into the city, it was still bright enough for some of her neighbors to be out mowing the small lawns in front of their squared-off brick houses or apartment buildings, or to be ritualistically polishing their cars. That was how they wiled away their time in this part of town. There was a Germanic sense of order that ran deep here. South St. Louisans had been known to cut down majestic trees for no reason other than that they didn't want leaves littering their lawns.

It had been one of Nudger's rougher days. He was tired, and he took the two flights of wooden stairs up to Claudia's apartment slowly. He was a bit surprised at the effort the climb required. Each year his legs seemed to weigh more. The stairwell was still hot from the afternoon, and the open window on the landing did nothing to dispel the heated air or to lessen the mingled cooking smells that seemed to be common to old apartment buildings.

When finally he stood in front of Claudia's door and had his fist drawn back to knock, the door suddenly swung open.

Claudia was dressed to go out. She was wearing her plain navy-blue dress, high-heeled shoes, and a double string of pearls around her neck. Unpretentious. Elegant. He liked her dressed like that. Her eyes widened wildly for an instant, then she stepped back gracefully and smiled.

But too late. He knew.

She'd been expecting someone else.

Nudger walked into the apartment and looked around. There were tracks of roughed-up nap on the carpet from the vacuum sweeper, and everything was exactly in place. Even the magazines on the coffee table were fanned out precisely like a hand of cards, the way they were in a doctor's waiting room in the morning, before the patients messed them up. Nudger hadn't seen Claudia's apartment this neat since right after she'd moved in.